i. What is the role of MARG in ensuring Child Rights? India’s children will only achieve the rights guaranteed to them if every Indian believes this should be so and exercises all the power at our command – as parents, neighbors, consumers, employees, businesspeople, teachers, politicians, journalists, professionals, bureaucrats, activists and most importantly as citizens – to make this a reality. MARG’s role is to amplify the voice of India’s children to reach large numbers globally and enlist their support for this cause. We do this by partnering NGOs at grassroots levels, mobilizing people to address the root causes that lead to violation of child rights and by building awareness on issues through media. We play the role of an advocacy organization that speaks, demands, negotiates as required with relevant state or citizen bodies for the rights of children. ii. What is the difference between Relief and Rights? The Relief approach addresses the symptoms of the problem – malnourishment, children out of school, children in the work force, female infanticide etc. The rights approach identifies the underlying causes of these problems – caste, gender and class biases, livelihoods and absent or indifferent governance - and finds long-term solutions by ensuring children and communities are informed and empowered to seek their entitlements under the law. The relief approach treats children as objects of sympathy needing our help. The rights approach recognizes them as citizens who are entitled to all that has been promised them under the Constitution and by the United Nations Child Rights Charter. iii. How does MARG reach these basic rights to children? At MARG, we’ve learned that permanent change is only possible when children, their parents and their communities are informed about their rights and engage with their local government bodies to ensure the root causes of their immediate problems are solved. Based on this, we evolved our philosophy of community mobilization - empowering communities – (the immediate family, the immediate neighborhood and the village or the town) to resolve the problem affecting them. To achieve this we partner grassroots NGOs who can work with these communities. MARG helps these projects with project-planning, financial management, material requirements, perspective-building programs, workshop, awareness programs, organizational development and training for skill building, information support, and developing promotional materials. iv. What are the goals of MARG? The overriding goal of MARG is to assist the destitute and abandoned children. Our motive is to involve and make every citizen responsible for his/her social responsibility in some way or the other; it is more of a people’s movement. MARG's mission is “to help & support those less fortunate, in proportion to what we have and what they do not”. Ultimate goal is “No child should remain Mother less” v. When was the group formed? The group was formed in 2006 by a few friends who volunteered and the founder Mrs.Nafeesa Ismail. vi. How is it supported? MARG is a non-profit organization in Hyderabad, India and appeals to well wishers to support the program. vii. How much does it cost to sponsor a child? The cost to support one child is INR.12, 000 per year, which is INR.1000 per month. vii. What can I do to help? A tax-deductible donation to The MARG Foundation directly assists in making sure that the children have shelter, food, clothing and an education. Frequently asked questions about sponsoring a child ix. How much does it cost to sponsor a child? We ask for a minimum donation of INR.1000 a month for new sponsors. Many donors give INR.2000 or INR.3000 a month. x. Will this cost rise as the child grows up? In general if the cost of sponsorship rises we tell donors. However, existing donors may carry on paying their existing rate unless the difference becomes too great. xi. Where does the money go? 21% of the sponsorship money received goes towards the expenses of the foundation where the child lives and our projects in that location (such as support programs for AIDS orphans). We do not split budgets down child by child; however, where sponsors give additional gifts to the child for festivals or birthdays we ensure that this money is used for that specific child (we accept financial donations, which are put into a savings account for that specific child). xii. So how do you pay for your costs, newsletters, information etc.? Where people pay for sponsorship through payroll giving etc., so that the tax is already reclaimed, we cover the costs of sponsorship from our general funds. Where people pay us directly, and gift-aid their donation, we can reclaim this tax and the tax is used to pay for the costs of sponsorship for them and others. xii. May we write to and visit the children we sponsor? We always welcome letters to the children and the children always like getting letters. We can also help with translations, where necessary. However, we do not make children reply to every letter or write a thank-you letter for every gift. Some children do so themselves; and sometimes they correspond frequently with sponsors, especially if they speak the same language. We have thought a lot about this, and realized in general that this is the polite thing to do in English society. But our primary concern is the welfare and happiness of the child and we would like the child to feel the love and support they are getting is unconditional. It is also possible to visit the orphanage, although we do not wish to turn our orphanages into a kind of zoo - the privacy of all the children in our care and their right to a normal upbringing will always remain our priority. xiiiv. Can we choose the child we sponsor? Basically, No. There are privacy issues involved in sending out details of children to potential sponsors. You can tell us what particular type of child you would like to sponsor (boy, girl, approximate age) and if you would like to sponsor to special needs of the child you can talk to us and we will see which children are available. Also if for some reason the first child you are sent is not suitable, we will try to help. xv. What religion will my sponsored child be? As with real families children generally are brought up in their mother's faith until they are old enough to make decisions themselves. If a child comes to us of a particular faith we will generally place them with a mother of the same faith. If you would like to sponsor a Hindu child, a Christian child or a Muslim child for example, then we have many children available for sponsorship in orphanages. Although many of our sponsors and people who work for us are religious and we treat religion very seriously, we do not try to introduce different religions or cultures into a region. In general we respect the local culture in its entirety: there are only a very small number of exceptions to this (we prohibit physical punishment of children even if local culture and law allows it). Read some testimonials from child sponsors and find out more about being a sponsor. Pros and Cons of Sponsoring a Child There is some discussion in the media from time to time about whether child sponsorship is the best way to help children. Part of the problem is that what people call "child sponsorship" varies from charity to charity. What we consider child sponsorship is a little different from some other charities and you may find when you read this explanation that this sets your mind at rest: Sponsorship with MARG Children: We are not a general poverty relief charity. General poverty relief charities are very good things, but we have a specialized mission concentrating on children who are all alone without anyone to care for them. Sponsorship with MARG Children is primarily paying for the sponsored child to have an emotional support where he/she can look forward for outside the orphanage. On an average MARG also supports around ten children in the community for each child who lives in the orphanage (e.g. through providing a school, medical care and a local nurse supporting child led AIDS orphans in the nearby area). But most of what you pay for is the direct care of the children you sponsor. They are OUR children, they have no one else. Sponsorship with MARG Children: the children whom we take in have lost their parents and have no family to care for them. It is rather positive in circumstances where children feel alone and unloved to feel there is someone somewhere taking an interest in them. We encourage contact with sponsors and for sponsors to visit our orphanages. We spend time and effort passing on extra gifts for birthdays and similar. With our special mission to children who have lost their parents, sponsorship is rather positive. General argument: "The administration expenses involved in sponsorship are high and this money could be better used directly helping poverty". Our view: If the strict alternative to sponsorship is for all the money to be used to help children then that would be better. Some donors give regular donations without sponsorship and they are very valued. However, it has been estimated that the whole world's poverty could be cured for the amount of money which Europeans spend on Ice Cream. As for the cost level, it is not that high. We pass on 79% of the actual donations received to benefit the child and cover our administration costs with the remaining 21%. We even have a little left over from those who do Gift Aid. Next argument: "There are privacy issues involved in publishing details of children available to sponsor". We agree and we would not do this. Sponsors obviously get the real details of the children they support but they are not given permission to publish these. We do not post "available to sponsor" pictures. Fundraising would be much easier if we broadcast tales of children's misery but we do give out children's details publically, and avoid publishing identifiable photographs and names of children unless we have genuine permission to do so (for example in some instances from the child themselves once they have grown up). We take protecting our children seriously, after all that is what we are here for. There is one other thing we ought to mention. Since we encourage relationships between sponsors and children, when we increase the "minimum" price for sponsorship we do not generally terminate sponsorships when the sponsor does not feel able to increase their contribution (unless the gap becomes very large). Ending a sponsorship can give a negative message to a child who has already had a lot to cope with. This means that our average income per sponsorship is considerably less than INR.1000/month. Some donors do support children in the community by making a regular donation. Therefore, although each child generally only has one sponsor (occasionally two), we allow them to have some other sponsors from around the world. Of course, all the money raised from the child sponsorship goes to that child and the immediate supporting charity (it isn't like selling the same thing twice). If this seems less attractive than sponsoring with a charity where each child only has one sponsor, the other thing to remember is that for charities where "sponsorship" includes children who are not directly given a home by a charity but are just visited by an aid worker occasionally there is generally no guarantee in practice of knowing whether a child is sponsored through several different charities (e.g. one paying for a nearby school and another for a medical centre in a nearby town). You might think that this means the relationship when you sponsor a child is less unique than otherwise. However, our child sponsors recognize that sponsorship with MARG Children is already rather special, far more so than getting reports from a field worker visiting the child's school periodically. In practice the majority of sponsors worldwide do not visit and write regularly to their sponsored child, and those that do so are appreciated, and can have as unique a relationship as any between people anywhere.
	Aim:
	LETS TAKE THIS CAUSE ACROSS GLOBALLY AND HELP RELATE THE WORLD WITH THESE CHILDREN ATLEAST FOR A DAY LETS MAKE A DIFFERENCE GLOBALLY
	we are known worldwide for our Love support and generosity come let’s prove this to the world.